As with his famous “Asturias”, Albéniz’ transcription of “Mallorca” for guitar became a great deal more popular than the original version for piano. He probably composed this tender, dreamy “barcarolle” during his second trip to Mallorca in May 1890. In so doing, he remained faithful to his penchant for portraying regions of his native land in music. Enrique Granados, who admired Albéniz as a friend and patron, is said to have sat down at the piano when the composer was on his deathbed and greatly moved him with a rendering of “Mallorca”. Today’s pianists can play this sophisticated work in an edition with superb engraving which also displays Henle’s customary faithfulness to the musical text.

Critical CommentaryAs far as we know today, no manuscripts of Isaac Albéniz’s barcarole Mallorca have survived. For this reason, only printed editions could be used as sources for the present publication. These are the English first edition and the Spanish second edition, which were published in 1891 and c. 1898 respectively, and independently from one another. The relatively numerous divergences between them prove that SE did not use FE as its source. And while there are no substantial differences between the two editions,there are enough other aspects to show clearly that each edition was newly engraved: different breaks of staves and pages, discrepant engraving errors and many minor variations of accidentals, pedals, dynamics and tempi. These divergences can only be partially explained as interventions made during the editorial process or adjustments made by the engraver; in most cases, they are probably due to slight differences between the two manuscript sources. We do not know, however, what was used as the source: an autograph by the composer or a copy commissioned by him? The engraver’s copy of 1898 was visibly neither a reworking nor a revised version of the 1891 print; indeed, it even seems to show more errors than its predecessor. Since FE has fewer errors and is missing fewer expression marks than SE, we have chosen FE as the primary source for this edition.

In the present edition, we have as a general principle documented all editorial emendations in the music text of the primary source. The editor’s additions, placed in parentheses, have been made on the basis of the immediate context or of parallel passages. (Measures 1–33 and 76–108 of the outer sections, and measures 34–46 and 58–70 of the middle sections are almost identical, even down to certain specific details and errors in the engraving. This suggests that the two repeated sections in the manuscript source were not written out and were thus obviously intended as identical reprises. The few divergences between the corresponding sections have thus been treated as engraving errors and adapted according to the respective parallel passage.) All other major changes made with respect to the main source and which are not visible in the music are legitimated in the following textual notes.

What is neither identified in the musical text nor described in the Comments are editorial emendations such as the consistent placing of instructions for tempo changes above the upper staff, the standardized positioning of general dynamic indications between the staves, the precise placement and – at crescendo and decrescendo hairpins – the length of expression marks following present-day rules of engraving, and the deletion of superfluous accidentals as well as the addition of cautionary accidentals wherever deemed necessary. We have also tacitly supplemented occasionally missing rests, clefs, augmentation dots and note stems.